Genetic Traits May Promote Chronic Pain: Study

Countless Americans suffer from some type of chronic pain, which makes day-to-day life virtually intolerable. In many instances, medical practitioners are able to identify the cause of unrelenting pain; however, in some cases, the causes remain unclear. When patients complain about vague pain, they’re often looked at with suspicion, especially when they request pain medications to help relieve their symptoms. That said, according to new research, many of these people are actually enduring very real persistent pain related to genetic influences which control the brain’s reaction to stressful events.

The Hypothalamic-pituitary Adrenal (HPA) Axis

A study out of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine suggests that genetic traits have the power to promote chronic pain in certain individuals, even when there’s no physical reason for their symptoms. Published in the journal Pain, the research found that traumatic or stressful events can cause certain people to develop persistent pain long after they’ve experienced an event.

According to researchers, variations in the gene encoding for the protein FKBP5 can negatively influence the body’s HPA axis. Ultimately, this appears to cause a problem with the body’s flight or fight response system, resulting in unrelenting pain, which appears to have no central cause.

Cause Equals Treatments

Sadly, many people are forced to live with chronic pain, because medical practitioners aren’t able to target a cause and prescribe an effective treatment. That said, if you suffer from temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD), your future is not so bleak.

Because it causes a variety of seemingly unrelated symptoms, TMD can make people think they are suffering from all sorts of different ailments; however, invariably, temporomandibular joint disorder always traces back to one source cause: a misaligned bite.